The End of Something

Said The Gramophone will be taking a day off tomorrow as we prepare to move to a new home. I'm utterly baffled by the computer science issues (which, I believe, are fairly simple), but I do have a crafty team working on the move. Hopefully, we will be up and running in our cosy new place on Wednesday.

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Spengler - "The Choice Is Made, The Traveler Has Come"

Driving through New Brunswick and into Nova Scotia in February, the smell of evergreen is pungent and the fog can be blinding.

This song, through screamed harmonies and shredding guitar, manic energy and unexpected changes, vividly evokes that drive. Though I've never seen the Bay of Fundy, one gets the sense from "The Choice" that it is a grand, fearsome natural wonder (I just looked up the Bay of Fundy, and apparently it has extremely high tides, which, I guess, could be seen as both grand and fearsome. Well done, Spengler.)

Spengler the band is to be distinguished from Spengler the mathematician and philosopher, whose own recordings are subtle and subdued (more in the vein of Low). [Buy]

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Joy Division - "Decades"

Atrocity Exhibition, the first song on Joy Division's exceptional Closer, is an invitation to "come inside." "Decades", the last song, is a farewell (to life, as it turned out).

The muted bass and Gothic hammer-on guitar combine with the synthesized string slashes and low-down stilted drone of Ian Curtis's vocals to make the sort of medieval Requiem that could only have been composed in early eighties Northern England.

At halfway through the song the keyboards start to lose their tuning and the band comes out of time. This is the "degeneration" that Curtis sings about. It's giving up.

"Decades" is a song for the end of something.

Sniff...Goodbye Tangmonkey. [Buy]

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House warming party on Wednesday. Everyone's gonna be there.

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No, I Won't Call You Back

So, I'm going home to Ottawa today, where there is no computer.

"In all of Ottawa?"
"No, just in my shack."

Alas, this will be my last post until Monday night. And it's short. Why? Because I have to go to my apartment, feed my cat (Bruno, the Berber (purr-purr) kitty), pack some stuff and come back here (to this land of computers and technicians), all within the next hour (I should allow for about an hour of travel time), so that I can get picked up by (the) Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet, who will trustily pilot me homeward.

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Muluqen Mellesse - "Wetetie mare"

From the first volume of the terrific Ethiopiques compilation, this track is a party replete with noise-makers and jaunty horns (do they have those at parties?). [Buy]

Because it's Canadian Thanksgiving in Ethiopia too.

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Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians. See you on Monday, everybody.